The Washington
Times also reveals that the chief suspect is "employed as a contractor
in the Washington area." Curiouser
and curiouser. Is his contract with a government agency? If so, which
one would have use for a maker of mass murder? As a libertarian, I am naturally
for privatization: but there are some government-owned and operated assets
that just can't – or, rather, shouldn't – be privatized: that is, if one could
even define germ warfare as an "asset" in any meaningful sense of the term.
As my friend Lew Rockwell said to
me recently: "If you want to see the real evil of government, then ask yourself:
what other entity would unleash something so monstrous?"

I DON'T WANT
TO GO THERE

Citing
law enforcement sources, the Washington Times reports that the suspect's
reaction to the events of 9/11 was to make a threat to use anthrax. His home
was searched, where "numerous chemicals" were found  but no
anthrax. The story cites Barbara
Hatch Rosenberg, a microbiologist with the Federation of American Scientists,
whose fascinating
analysis of the anthrax mystery is must reading – but only for those who
don't scare all that easily. Because what she reveals about this grotesque
case is unsettling in the extreme, leading to the undeniable conclusion that
the US government has something to hide. As to just what that might be, I
almost don't want to go there....

THE SHORT
LIST

Rosenberg
says that she can't understand the FBI's lethargy in this matter. After all,
they've been working on a very short list of suspects: not that many
people have both the scientific knowledge and the access to vital materials
necessary to the making of such highly weaponised anthrax as was delivered
to the offices of Senators Daschle and Leahy. The FBI, Rosenberg contends,
has finally narrowed it down to "a particular person ... a member of the biochemical
community." This person, it seems, has been questioned more than once, but
no one is pressing any charges. Why not? "Is the FBI dragging its feet?" Rosenberg
asks. Her answer gives law enforcement the benefit of a doubt: "I just don't
know. And, if so, I don't know why." If the FBI is our only protection against
anthrax-wielding terrorists, then I don't think I want to know. God help us
all.

ATTACK OF
THE MAD SCIENTIST

Naturally,
the
FBI has denied the Washington Times story, and Ari Fleischer, the
President's spokesman, averred that the number of suspects is more than one:
"I wish it were that easy and that simple right now," he said. Yet they're
still sticking to their "lone nut" theory, with Van Harp, assistant director
of the FBI's Washington office, writing in a letter to microbiologists nationwide
that this person has "a clear, rational thought process and appears to be
very organized in the production and mailing of these letters." Oh, now I
get it: instead of arresting him, they're going to make him a job offer. But
just how credible is this brilliant-but-mad scientist scenario?

ANOTHER 'LONE
NUT'?

Both
the FBI and the Washington Times assume that we are dealing with a
single perpetrator, a lone nut who, for some reason, and with remarkable efficiency,
managed to pull off a feat many at first attributed to state-sponsored terrorism.
I don't buy it. As
Dr. Meryl Nass puts it in Red Flags Weekly:

"I am
referring here to the anthrax attacker in the singular and using the male gender,
although I suspect that, for logistical reasons, it is unlikely that one person
acted alone, or was even a loner, as the FBI profile has suggested."

A FEW QUESTIONS

Dr. Nass
asks some very interesting questions that give us some insight into the possible
motives of the attacker(s):

"Why had
the anthrax been sent in letters, rather than released in ventilation systems,
tunnels or subways? The (estimated) two trillion spores per letter could have
caused a lot more mischief in another setting."

MAKING AN
IMPACT

A true
terrorist would want to spread death, and not just fear. Aside from that,
however:

"Something
else was odd. The attacker had actually warned the recipients that the letters
contained anthrax, and suggested they take penicillin. Then a light-bulb went
off: someone was sending these letters to create an effect, not to cause damage.
The letters were sealed with tape, presumably to further prevent the escape
of spores. The point was to frighten, not to kill. And the targets were chosen
with an eye to getting publicity and making an impact on Congress."

Making an impact
on Congress to do – what? It's the political aspect of this curious case that
argues against the "lone nut" theory, and gives the whole affair a rather
ominous cast. For the achievement of a particular political goal conjures
up a picture of an ideologically-motivated cabal, a lobbying group that was
willing to go to unusual lengths in order to impress the US government with
the urgency of its agenda.

A PROFESSIONAL
JOB

The key
issue here is motive. The "lone nut" scenario would have it that a single
disgruntled scientist may have released the pathogens in order to get more
funding for biowar research. But the extreme thoroughness with which these
crimes were carried out suggests that the renegade scientist may not have
acted alone. As Dr. Nass puts it:

"The attacker
also had familiarity with forensic investigations. He avoided using saliva on
the letters, used a form of printing that is most difficult to analyze, and
otherwise left a paucity of evidence. Did he have professional help?"

As to what profession
would be most helpful, it seems clear that this is the work of some government
agency  but which government are we talking about?

AN INSIDE
JOB

Dr. Nass
seems to imply, at times, that the US government is somehow involved. She
theorizes that filling the envelope with such a highly weaponised form of
anthrax would be almost inevitably fatal unless the perpetrator prepared his
deadly missive within the confines of a special facility used for experimental
purposes – and available in the US only at a few carefully monitored government
sites. With vague references to "the biowarfare establishment," and allusions
to the CIA, clearly Dr. Nass is at least highly suspicious that the US government
unleashed anthrax on its own people: perhaps in order to ratchet up the level
of fear and make the populace more tractable. But the good Doctor, I believe,
should stick to her own field – science – and leave the speculation as to
motive to others. For this "the government was behind it" scenario makes no
sense at all: the level of fear, and of funding for "anti-terrorist" programs,
was already high in the wake of 9/11. Putting anthrax in letters to US Senators
and other high profile targets seems like overkill, if you'll pardon the expression.

The evidence
indicates that unauthorized research and entry into supposedly secure facilities
occurred at Fort Detrick over an extended period of time, and that the culprit
(or culprits) got away not only with anthrax but with a
wide variety of deadly pathogens, some so virulent and top secret that slides
of samples were labeled "unknown" – security at these facilities being
so lax at the time as to be practically nonexistent. A former chief of the
Ft. Detrick lab suspects that an elaborate system of deception was employed
in the record-keeping department, so that many specimens were not even entered
in inventory before they disappeared. But how could a "lone nut" have pulled
off such a feat unaided? In order to cover his tracks, he would've needed
the cooperation of allies in key positions at the lab. This militates against
the "lone nut" theory, and reinforces the idea that the perpetrators of the
anthrax attacks had some "professional help."

BEYOND BELIEF

It is
certain – in a sane world, that is  that the US government could not
have facilitated the release of such horrors as Hanta-virus,
ebola,
and god knows what other unknown plagues into the general population: the
consequences of such an action would be so heavy as to outweigh any conceivable
benefit. Yes, yes, I can just hear the tinfoil hat crowd objecting: "But we
aren't living in a sane world, as
you yourself have pointed out recently." We may be living in Bizarro
World, at least in certain respects, but the axiom that our rulers will
always act in order to preserve their own power is one of those pre-9/11 truisms
that has survived intact: indeed, the eternal truth of it has been demonstrated
by the alarming alacrity with which the government used the tragedy to aggregate
more power to itself. That they would endanger this power by doing something
so stupid, or allowing it to happen, defies belief.

ANOTHER ANGLE

The ideological
angle of this strange case has, so far, been completely overlooked: in her
list of possible beneficiaries of the anthrax scare, Dr. Nass lists "the biowar
establishment," whatever that is, which certainly was not that desperate
for extra funding, as well as the makers of antibiotics. However, she neglects
to mention the likeliest possibility. What is all too believable is that some
foreign intelligence agency with substantial assets in the US penetrated a
government lab and recruited a clique of scientists and other insiders, initially
for purposes of routine spying but eventually launching a full-scale terrorist
operation designed, not to kill, but to frighten everyone out of their wits
– and provoke an anti-Arab reaction.

ONE GUESS

In my
last column on this subject, I detailed the story of Dr.
Ayaad Assaad, an Egyptian microbiologist who used to work at Ft. Detrick,
where he attracted the hostile attention of a clique known as the "Camel Club":
they put obscene missives in his mailbox and otherwise tirelessly harassed
him, until one of their number, Lt. Col. Philip Zack, was fired because of
this hate campaign. Zack was also videotaped entering the lab after hours,
without authorization, with the cooperation of one of his fellow Camel Club
members.

So we have a
viscerally anti-Arab clique at a biowar lab that might have been the cat's-paw
of a foreign government – now which foreign government could that be?

SPIKED TO
THE MAX

The other
day I was talking with my webmaster, Eric Garris, about this story, and remarking
that the way it's being treated in the media is remarkably
similar to the way the Fox
News story on Israeli spying in the US was treated: i.e. in relation to
its importance, and possible implications, the amount of attention it is receiving
is negligible. Fox News reporter Carl Cameron's FBI sources told him that
not only had Israel compromised supposedly secure US communications systems
– the phone system of the Departments of Defense and State, as well as the
White House  but they had also launched an effort to physically penetrate
important US defense facilities in the months prior to 9/11. Surely this would
include such facilities as the bioweapons lab at Ft. Detrick, and others around
the country.

MEANS &
MOTIVE

Israel
not only has the means, but also the motive: certainly an anti-Arab backlash
in the US would aid their cause, and make the American public much more amenable
to wiping out their Arab enemies. Indeed, Israel's supporters in the US were quick to suggest that Iraq was behind the attacks, and such a prominent Israel
Firster as Andrew Sullivan lost no time in calling on Bush to at least consider
nuking Iraq in retaliation. Indeed, it seems as though the "Camel Club" at
Ft. Detrick must have been reading some of Sullivan's more virulent anti-Arab
postings, and those of his fellow "war-bloggers," whose hostility to all things
Arab was eerily echoed in this repulsive bit of doggerel attached to a rubber
camel, a "gift" to Assaad from the "Camel Club":

"In (Assaad's)
honor we created this beast;
It represents life lower than yeast."

Some denizen
of the extreme Israeli right-wing couldn't have said it better. So perhaps
earlier speculation that the anthrax letters were the work of right-wing extremists
was essentially right – only they got the wrong country.

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